Four Hospitals Swap Kidneys In Domino-Style Transplants
07.08.09 |
Four hospitals, eight kidneys, 16 patients and a small army of doctors and nurses add up to one impressive game of dominoes. The hospitals pulled off a complex series of operations on eight kidney donors and eight recipients in cities around the county. A press release says surgical teams at the four hospitals started with a genetic rather than a mathematical problem. Local kidney donors would step up to help a would-be recipient, but the organs were a mismatch for blood or tissue types. So all the donor kidneys were swapped down the line to the next person who needed it, until eight kidneys found their way to the perfect match.
The transplants took place from mid-June until Monday, when the last operation was performed. With some coordination and more willing kidney donors, surgeons hope the domino procedure leads to another 15-hundred transplants a year. There are currently 84-thousand Americans awaiting a new kidney. The participating hospitals were the Johns-Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
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